Playonverbs' Potpourri

Book: Blindsight

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I read Blindsight by Peter Watts.

The novel puts a very interesting spin on the alien first contact trope, with a point of view from a character who might have more in common with the aliens than baseline humanity.

I absolutely love the ideas of consciousness and self-awareness that the book puts forward. Those coupled with the highly intelligent nature of the aliens the crew encounter make for a truly alien and truly inscrutable species.

Some thoughts I had bring spoilers below the fold.

The concept of how the aliens view transmissions from Earth they’ve received from that radiating sphere of EM emissions is also interesting. The aliens don’t have self-awareness and through some element of heuristics treat every piece of information they encounter with utter seriousness.

Book: Consider Phlebas

Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I recently finished Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks.

I’d been aware of the book and the wider Culture series that it is a part of for many years. But I think I avoided getting into the series for two main reasons: I was under the impression that I would have to start the series and work my way through through its 10 novels like some confused, starved moss. Only getting through sizeable numbers of pages when the humidity, temperature and mood all aligned and left trying to patch together the wider setting from novels read months apart.

The other reason requires a bit of groundwork — The Culture novels centre around a spacefaring collection of species, machines and technology bearing the name. They are a post-scarcity lot, unneeding of money or energy or much materials within their borders and almost all of them can pursue whatever whim they want. While this sounds lovely as a civilisational goal, it does feel like it would make for boring reading.

Thankfully the novels often skirt at the edges of the society and the space in which it inhabits while also covering interactions with other societies — Consider Phlebas covers a sliver of a war the Culture is embroiled in and, as a result, characters often stray out of the main ideals to get things done. Despite this I still stayed away for a long, long time.

Shortly after I’d started reading it I cursed my younger naive self. The book was full of interesting characters and places. Never did I feel I was stuck in the cushy embrace of a place where all (interest-brewing) conflict had been stamped out. Banks’ style also works well to give vibrant descriptions of the myriad of locations seen in the book while also not letting the reader get too bogged-down in those locations. The setting, while inherently vast also feels deeply historied (the novel itself takes place around 1400 AD), with plenty of present and distant civilisations flitting about the galactic volume.

I’m very happy I managed to get into the series, the next book (released chronologically) waits on my shelf for me to dig into. I imagine I won’t take me long at all to get started.

Reviving Clinical Calculator

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Five years ago we worked during the week-long Young Rewired State hackathon to create an API for clinical risk-score calculators and for looking-up child growth charts from various measurements. Inputs could be sent and an output received using any internet-connected device. This was thanks to the mentorship of Marcus Baw during the week while we worked at Leigh Hackspace¹.

Our project progressed to the finals of YRS and won an NHS competition. However the idea didn’t initially take root further within the medical community at the time. However now the idea has germinated into a new open-source project created by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health².

The power of technology in medicine has been leveraged throughout medical techniques like MRI and other advanced imaging. However even on a lower level computing has much to offer to improve existing processes and create new ones within the clinical landscape. Furthermore open-source practices can help maintain trust and transparency in implementations of these processes.

Hopefully the coming years brings more thoughtful integration of computing within clinical environments for the betterment of patients and clinicians.

Introductions

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Wikipedia gives the definition of a Potpourri as:

A mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant materials, used to provide a gentle natural scent.

This is much like the intended tone of this blog, a mixture of thoughts; some old, some new and almost definitely all of them thought before.